Creating accessible content is a challenge that many educators, institutions and organizations around the world face daily. Over the course of the last year, you probably have heard us talk a lot about the challenges of course content accessibility and how our solution, Blackboard Ally, focuses on making digital course content more accessible by integrating seamlessly into the Learning Management System (LMS).

But that is just one piece of the puzzle. Just think about all the different contexts in which content can be consumed in today’s digital age. Our vision for Blackboard Ally has always been to try and touch as much of the content that is consumed daily as possible. One of the most common questions we received since we launched the product last year is “can it scan my website too?”.

Up until now the answer to that question was slightly abbreviated. In December, we released an integration with Blackboard Web Community Manager (WCM) as the next step to helping K-12 districts incorporate accessibility into their school websites. Now, we’re very pleased to introduce Blackboard Ally for Websites, our newest tool that focuses on helping make public website content more accessible.

Our main goal with Blackboard Ally for Websites is to help you take control of your content with usability, accessibility and quality in mind without being limited by a specific CMS. It integrates with your existing CMS and will scan your website and embedded media for accessibility issues to provide actionable reporting that allows you to find and prioritize those issues that are most impactful.

We are excited to continue our commitment to accessibility and to provides schools, institutions and organizations a consistent way of tackling accessibility across both the private LMS content and the public website content. This is the next positive step forward in the progress we can make together with solutions to help make better content, better experiences and provide more options for everyone to succeed.